


A trap or blessing

by sphilia



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! GX
Genre: Gen, dad angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-07
Updated: 2012-11-07
Packaged: 2017-11-18 03:38:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/556488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sphilia/pseuds/sphilia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every hero has a weakness. Ed's probably isn't stairs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A trap or blessing

He's not fond of stairs. It's not something he'd consider one of his defining traits, and he rarely thinks about it, but there it is: Ed Phoenix doesn't like stairs. It's why his dream home is something wide, spacious, modern, and a single floor. It's why he doesn't stay in hotels without elevators. It's why he had the stairways in DD's (his, now) manor redecorated to be just a tad more spacious and well-lit.

Sometimes he dreams about them, and in the dream they're darker and more imposing than they ever were in life, black outlines steadily climbing downward to a scene he knows with absolute conviction that he doesn't want to see.

He sits on the first step and waits for a person who'll never come. He doesn't cry. He didn't cry back then, either; not for a long, long time. As if everything inside him froze to ice that night. Even in the dream, he feels the budding chill of that bone-deep frost creeping into him, though in the dream he doesn't know why, shouldn't know why. He should still be that innocent child of innocent joys waiting patiently for that person to come and read him a bedtime story and kiss him good night.

He doesn't remember how to be that child anymore. He can only be this poor imitation, huddling frightfully against the pitch darkness below him. Some nights he doesn't move from there at all, just shivers and waits until he wakes in tears and sneaks into Saiou's room and clings to him without explanation. (Saiou understands, and doesn't tell him that he's really too old for that, now.)

The other nights are worse, a grotesque reprise of that one event, every detail etched deep into his mind, bright and clear. The faint creaking of the stairs, the sickly sweet scent of death in the air, the still form on the floor below, bathed in the clear moonlight, every line of his father's face sharp and defined, yet strangely elusive, dream and distant memory mingling and combining to play out this awful scene for him, again and again.

Those nights, he wakes feeling like his heart has been ripped out all over again, and he curls into a ball on the very edge of the bed and shudders away from any touch from a worried friend. He doesn't get any more sleep those nights. He just lies there, trying to remember how to feel anything other than the cold emptiness in his chest, until he grows sick and tired of it and gets up and pretends to be fine.

And really, he is fine. Childish dreams shouldn't - _don't_ \- affect him that badly. Ed Phoenix doesn't have time to be a kid. No... After all these years, he's not sure he even remembers how.

All he can do is just keep moving forward. He's alright. He's fine. And if he happens to prefer elevators to stairways, well. Plenty of people would agree with him. There's nothing strange about it.

He's just not fond of stairs.


End file.
